Archive for the ‘Public Records’ Category

Next week the U. S. District Court of California will issue the sentence for Lori Drew, the MySpace “cyberbully” who was convicted of violating the MySpace terms of service when she created a false profile. [See my article, Think Twice Before Going Undercover.] In that piece I talk about some of the considerations for the investigator who is tempted to fabricate an identity on a social networking site in order to gain access to a user’s otherwise private profile.

Here’s a legal issue to mull over. Perhaps this applies in other states, but in California, in criminal cases, the criminal defense investigator or prosecution investigator can’t interview a potential witness without first “clearly identifying himself or herself.” This is found in California Penal Code 1054.8:

1054.8. (a) No prosecuting attorney, attorney for the defendant, or investigator for either the prosecution or the defendant shall interview, question, or speak to a victim or witness whose name has been disclosed by the opposing party pursuant to Section 1054.1 or 1054.3 without first clearly identifying himself or herself, identifying the full name of the agency by whom he or she is employed, and identifying whether he or she represents, or has been retained by, the prosecution or the defendant. If the interview takes place in person, the party shall also show the victim or witness a business card, official badge, or other form of official identification before commencing the interview or questioning.
(b) Upon a showing that a person has failed to comply with this section, a court may issue any order authorized by Section 1054.5.

A violation could lead to the exclusion of the evidence obtained from that interview. Isn’t the investigator attempting to “interview, question, or speak” to a witness when the investigator accesses the witness’s non-public social network profile? The private profile requires the participants be accepted as “friends” and is a mouthpiece for the account holder to speak to her selected audience. The investigator who disguises his identity to pry open that witness’s cyber door could risk the exclusion of any evidence gathered through that pretext, as well as picking up a misdemeanor.

Consumer-targeted people finder and background data reseller, Intelius, recently acquired the social networking people search site, Spock. Intelius is the ubiquitous Internet provider of background reports — serving the consumer hungry for criminal records and other dirt on potential dates, family members and service providers — but more expensive and not as comprehensive as professional databases. A good private investigator doesn’t just report information received from a database search but confirms and analyzes it, building on the raw data to deliver fuller and more accurate reports to the client. Despite the cost and limitations in the quality of the Intelius generated background reports, law offices sometimes use this service as a first stop, possibly because they think it will save them money. Or maybe, like many people, attorneys and legal assistants are thrilled by the prospect of getting the goods themselves.

Spock is a fee-based search engine — with a free teaser — for finding social networking profiles. Spock crawls websites, matching the personal information you provide, then returns the links. You’ll probably get more results from snitch.name, Wink or Pipl, and more refined returns from an advanced query at the top search engines. This map gives a rough guide to the most popular social networking sites by country.

Wouldn’t it be convenient and a boon to cross-border investigations to be able to search an online index of Mexico court records? An Internet search for a source for these directs you to Westlaw, a collection of legal research and fact-finding databases, costly and beyond the financial reach of most investigators. Searchsystems.net now includes Mexico civil and criminal index filings from Mexican federal and state courts in its collection of premium (fee-based) databases. Anyone can access the service, but Searchsystems subscribers get a discount. A free name search will return the number of records found in the index, but no other details. Once you enter the subject’s name and pay the fee you’ll be able to view all matching records. The detailed results provide party names, jurisdiction, date, court, docket number and, in criminal filings, the charges. A limitation of the Mexico criminal record indexes, unlike most US ones, is that they don’t contain a defendant’s date of birth. Here’s a image from a search result, or view a sample report at Searchsystems.

Do you know of any other Mexico civil or criminal index databases online?

[2011 Update: This database is no longer at Search Systems because the vendor isn't making it available.]

In Connecticut, a civil union license is issued by the registrar of vital statistics for the town in which the ceremony takes place or where the partners live, and recorded with the town clerk. Some town clerks have begun adding records of civil unions to their online index search, along with marriage, deaths, land records and trade names. The City of Danbury and the Town of Rocky Hill have civil unions recorded from 2005 to 2009.

Last year, I wrote about gathering information on domestic partnerships. Washington State has a domestic partnership registry online.

Do you know of any other online civil union or domestic partner registries?

The shuttering of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer print version during Sunshine Week is a sad reminder of the trend in big city papers. Increasingly, they can’t afford to operate in paper form, and maybe won’t be able to in online-only versions — depending on how the dollars shake out. It’s distressing to imagine the fate of democratic institutions without investigative journalists digging into the operations of government and making their findings broadly known. Support government transparency projects in your neighborhood.

More Sunshine Week state newspaper reports of local government on the web.

Illinois: Public’s access to local data varies

Indiana: Indiana ranks next to last in online records

Maryland: Make transparency permanent Maryland government policy

New York: Sunshine Week: N.Y. seeks cohesion for Web sites

North Carolina: Are records really public?

Ohio: Ohio sunshine law updates online highlights release of the Attorney General’s, Ohio Sunshine Laws, Open Government Resource Manual 2009

Pennsylvania: Civil records free to download in Pennsylvania county

Wisconsin: Shedding light on government activity

California lags, but Texas shines at the top of the rating of online access to government records — essential to a democratic system of governance and a core tool of the private investigator. Sunshine Week 2009 launched today with the publication of the survey ranking state governments’ online public records. The effort was developed and organized by Sunshine Week, the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ Freedom of Information Committee, the National Freedom of Information Coalition, and the Society of Professional Journalists’ FOI Committee. The volunteer surveyors found that most states are digitizing some records and linking to sites with additional records, but they are often hard to find. In general, states have a smattering of public records online and have not made an extensive effort toward transparency.

More state newspaper reports of local government on the web.

California: California’s middling online record performance

Colorado: Many key records available online, free in Colo.

Illinois: How Illinois fared in Sunshine Week survey

Iowa: Some Iowa counties still chasing the Web

Louisiana: SUNSHINE WEEK: Watchdog groups criticize Jindal administration’s lack of transparency

Minnesota: Survey: 65 percent of Minn. gov’t records online

Nevada: Sunshine Week: A call to keep flow of public information free

Tennessee: Tennessee not putting some public records online

Texas: It’s not the government’s information; it’s your information

Washington: Some, but not all Wash. government records online